Taking place in a galaxy of various worlds, the game promises space faring adventure and intrigue. The demo on the TGS show floor exhibits variety in theme and characters, showing that many of the promises made by Level 5 president Akihiro Hino when the game was first announced are well on their way to being fulfilled.
Most notable is the game's lack of loading time between areas. While this is not particularly unusual this late into the PS2's lifespan, it's a revolution that still mostly hasn't hit the RPG genre. Areas transition seamlessly, with towns phasing into dungeon areas without any abrupt transition, giving the game a more organic feel.
At the show, the contrast between different areas was readily apparent. The first environment I visited is a tribal town with lush greenery and folks attired as if in a National Geographic special. The second area on view is a big contrast -- it's a futuristic city that wouldn't look out of place in Xenosaga. The third area is a simple stone dungeon reminiscent of any and every RPG, but with an attention to detail that marks a Level 5 production.
As you move outside of the safety of civilization, encounters randomly pop up in the greenery. Enemies will swoop in from the sky, pop out of the ground, or otherwise appear. The battle system is fully action-based. Similar to .hack, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, or Kingdom Hearts -- take your pick -- the battles put you in charge of a team of three characters. You can switch between them at will; the two you aren't currently controlling are A.I. You and your cohorts have special abilities, which you either pick off the menu (for your own) or are given a choice to activate (your party members) via a pop-up info box. The battles are fast, and as you can jump, feature air combos and more action than many RPGs. Irritatingly, though, when you fight for awhile, you're forced to rest (as in Star Ocean) until you charge your energy back up. Also, many of the battles in the early TGS demo suffer from extremely noticeable slowdown and framerate issues.
One of the areas in the demo offers up a boss battle versus a huge lion made of roots, greenery, wood, and such. Think of the trees in The Lord of the Rings in the form of a fairly realistic lion and you're probably on the right track -- it was very inventive and cool. Visually the game is top notch, framerate issues aside, as you'd expect if you have played Dark Cloud 2 or Dragon Quest VIII. The characters, in contrast to Dark Cloud 2, are all adults and realistically proportioned, and the main character Jester actually sported different outfits in different areas (it's not clear if this is due to equipment differences or for plot reasons as the equipment menu was inaccessible in the demo version.)
Rogue Galaxy looks to be a fresh start for Level 5, a game that concentrates on combat and exploration, two of the key ingredients to making a compelling RPG. While the demo was short on story, there were plenty of cinematics playing in looping movies above the playable demos, so hopefully all of the ingredients are there to make this a memorable game. Hopefully the technical flaws can be ironed out, because this is a promising game, a high-quality RPG the likes of which Sony has not published itself since Level 5's Dark Cloud 2.
